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I do like the idea if a family ticket,i noticed while sadly trawling through some other league 2 club website's comparing gate price's,that some do operate this system,however largly confined to one area of the ground,maybe the club could have a trial period offering a section of the new grandstand up for family tickets,and see if it works.

I do fully understand about the current jobs situation around south devon,i to was made redundent in late 2006,as manufacturing industry has all but dissapeared around torbay/south devon,retail/hoiliday industry does not pay the sort of wages that manufacturing does,i also have 2 children.

However i can not execpt it as the root cause of the problem,and i seriuosly hope our directors,are not execpting it as 100% the reason,it is however partly due to this fact.

I put this on a banter base thread about our poor crowds,its true this really did happen,walking out of boots/laces after the bradford game,a chap standing there having a smoke says,was it 2.0 in the end,yes we replied.

To that the chap said,i used to go regular can no longer afford the £16 ,however he had spent the entire afternoon 30 seconds walk away from the popside entrance,and proberly parted with close to £50,is money the real reason why he no longer goes..no,he has lost his passion for tufc clearly.

To me passion is 50% the part of the problem,i know more than a few lads who like premiership clubs,they do not go,so i will not call them fans,i asked a few more than once would you like to come along to a tufc match,real live in the flesh pro-football,no is the answer every time,not going to spend £16 pound's wathcing that rubbish .

Like the lad above in this reply, every single one of them will not think twice about putting on there football shirt going to the pub on a sunday afternoon and parting with £60,when there team is live on sky,so to me money is not whole issue.

To me its about what we want as fans from tufc,if we are happy being an upper midtable league 2 then fine,what is all the fuss about?,or do we want to be a secure league 1 club,hosting the likes of sheff.w,charlton and southampton,with there away support see what happens to our gates then.

Increase our home fans by 500,it would bring around £150,000 plus,and then we have the player budget to achieve the above,lets get some passion in our supprt and stop excepting that we are a tiny club in the south west that will allways struggle to get fans.

yellow wrote:That is an interesting angle on the debate awayday.

Although when you consider all coastal clubs there is no clear pattern. From the crowds at the likes of Newcastle, Liverpool, Sunderland, Pompey, Cardifff and Southampton it would seem that population density and historic allegiances to the club have more influence.

In addition competition from rival clubs affects those with 360 degree catchment areas. Rochdale and Accrington Stanley are but two that spring to mind. There are many more.

As for TUFC fans becoming Manc season ticket holders. May they rot in hell...

This is why I said "Small Town Clubs" yellow, I was thinking the likes of Weymouth and Eastbourne, where you are reliant on the allegance and loyalty of the locals without the threat from surrounding clubs. Compared to the likes of other inland smaller clubs such as Exeter where their catchment area is of a 360 degree angle and therefore likely to capture twice as many as us (as their attendance records show).

Obvious when you start moving to large cities rather than towns you are of course going to come across local rivalries, such as Liverpool, Manchester and London all of which having numerous clubs within the cities themselves. Until the Queen issues Torquay the status of city, I am afraid to say we are but a small town in Devon with big hears.

So what we are saying is that the attendance is the result of many and varied influences to do with geography, economics and demographics and the perceived value of the entertainment on display.

If the club are reaching all of their target audience and have the correct pricing structure then it seems to me that there is little to be done about it apart from continuing to promote the youth and family orientated concessions.

We are fortunate to have a league club at all, let alone aspirations of making it again to the promised land of Div 1.

Unless we do a Crewe and generate funds from player sales then our crowds alone will not sustain us at that level. The current board are putting things in place to achieve that end. However it will take time to bear fruit.

How have Scunthorpe done it on their crowds? They were always a benchmark club for us, and yet somehow they have flown high in recent times.

Yellow - No we are not saying attendance is a result of varied influences, what we are saying is attendance is about the number of people we get into the ground. What they learn at school, whether it be Geography, Economics or Demographics (I think we called that Technical Drawing in my day) doesn't help with getting bums on seats.

I suppose the PE teachers could play an influence and try and get them to play their favourite Torquay players during football?

Which only serves to demonstrate the value of a decent education….

In my opinion the family stand is the one that lets us down the most, Kids Free with a paying adult there or something like that?

I wouldn't say free, the club still need to make money. Hereford charge £3 for under 10s. If kids for a quid isn't financially possibe maybe they could stretch to that?

yellow wrote:Which only serves to demonstrate the value of a decent education….

I am not sure education is important, but it goes to show PE is very important and could cause and influence on what team you are later to support.

forevertufc wrote: the thing is happytorq,you can pay up to £20 to go in at barnet,and northampton as said above with an average gate 4855,you pay up to £19 to go in.

whilst £16 may seem steep,it is compared to other league 2 sides a very competative price.

Hey - I'm sure that we're probably in line with a lot of clubs in the division, and we even compare favourably to several. But what I am saying is the demographics of the area mean that prices of this sort are not really sustainable. Torbay is in a depressed financial state, and has been for several years - the salaries are generally pretty crappy, because there is not a huge amount of business that is not tourism-based. You can throw numbers around about our 'catchment area' and all that stuff, but really you should be looking at numbers of viable supporters. You need to factor in the people who have enough of a disposable income to spend on tickets (this percentage would be lower than most places), as well as the people who are active followers of football (again, i'd guess this is also lower than the national average). Saying there are 100,000 potential 'customers' in the Bay area to compare with somewhere like Exeter is misleading. 100,000 people might be about right, but once you consider that a place like Exeter has a lot more going for it financially, such as a large student population (disposable income) and a more active non-tourism based economy, I think we see where the real differences are.

It's the same old story as we've always had. Do we want to risk the financial well being of the club just in the hope of attracting a few more fans? Just say that of the 2500 people we get most weeks, 2000 are paying the full £16. If you make the prices...say a tenner (which would a great price to advertise), you'd need to attract 1200 more people just to break even. really, how likely is that?

Is the supporter's trust still handing out the posters that advertise the games to local business? they did that when I was at the bookies and I thought that was a great idea.

Awayday wrote: I am not sure education is important, but it goes to show PE is very important and could cause and influence on what team you are later to support.

No Awayday. I think you mean RE.

For me following the Gulls is definitely a religious experience...

Now the problem that this thread is trying to address is how to convert the Torbay atheists into church going Gulls.

It is not a new problem and I don t see any quick fixes. Serving up decent quality football at sensible prices in a good atmosphere seems to be the best idea I have heard.

Awayday wrote:Yellow - No we are not saying attendance is a result of varied influences, what we are saying is attendance is about the number of people we get into the ground. What they learn at school, whether it be Geography, Economics or Demographics (I think we called that Technical Drawing in my day) doesn't help with getting bums on seats.

I suppose the PE teachers could play an influence and try and get them to play their favourite Torquay players during football?

Paul, I think you should have googled "demographics"

Made I larf.

yellow wrote: No Awayday. I think you mean RE.

For me following the Gulls is definitely a religious experience...

Now the problem that this thread is trying to address is how to convert the Torbay atheists into church going Gulls.

It is not a new problem and I don t see any quick fixes. Serving up decent quality football at sensible prices in a good atmosphere seems to be the best idea I have heard.

Perhaps our next purchase ought to be a little bubble car for Bucks. He could drive around the streets of Torquay, spreading the gospel...

And get the subs to pass round the collection box at half time?

SouthamptonGull wrote:

Paul, I think you should have googled "demographics"

Made I larf.

Being demographics is 99% of my job, did you really think I didn't know what it was???? Did you not know I was an ANILIST

HRG wrote:And get the subs to pass round the collection box at half time?

Don't the TUST do that already??